I really enjoyed reading all of these pieces! Writing sucky stuff is the best. I have always been passionate about the idea that English grammar is kind of ridiculous and self-proclaimed “grammar police” need to calm the hell down. I do totally get having a love for grammar. I always feel a big sense of personal satisfaction when I can dissect a sentence and poke around and change things. I like it when people tell me I spell good, or whatever. Validation always feels nice, okay! BUT I still absolutely reject the mindset that we need to force this grammar elitism on others.
I reject this especially when it leads to scaring/scarring young learners. In 2016 I presented at NCPTW (National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing) with a panel of three other Boise State Writing Center consultants and our former director. We are friends and coworkers, and we are all passionate about English, writing, Writing Center studies, and social justice. The theme of this conference and our panel was diversity and inclusivity as it relates to Writing Centers. I focused on the concept of linguistic discrimination and the ramifications of this dangerous mindset. If y’all are curious, here’s a link to the handout I made for the presentation.
I love this idea from The Importance of Writing Badly: that we need to stop “alienating young writers from the language we expect them to master.” Additionally, Dr. Ballenger’s article was published in 1990 - I find it very sad that this problem is still as insidiously buried in our education system as it was in the past. We really haven’t improved much.
I love writing and the power of the English language (and all languages). We should be allowed to play around with English, have fun with it, and learn from our mistakes. We should be allowed to write about whatever’s in “this moment” and write about whatever’s running through us, like Natalie Goldberg discusses in her piece. English as a language has consistently evolved throughout time, and continues to evolve as society changes, so why should grammar police have the right to say what is wrong? There are certain grammar conventions that should be followed, especially in academic settings, but we shouldn’t utilize fear tactics to help people learn them. Although I had my traumatic experiences in school, I never had a teacher in writing or English scare me like that. I consider myself lucky. All I feel I can do now is perpetuate the idea that writing should not be terrifying. My work at the Writing Center in recent years has energized this belief.
Here I’d like to move from this idea of social writing into this idea of personal writing, which are totally connected but also different. (That's why I called this post "Two Sides of the Same Coin.") I love what William Stafford explores in his piece. It’s interesting to me when he says that he wants “to take a definite position, and [his] main plea is for the value of an unafraid, face-down, flailing, and speedy process in using the language” (22-23). I actually didn’t like his piece at first, because the beginning was floaty and vague, but then I realized that was kind of the point. He's describing his own personal writing process, and how it doesn’t have to make sense or adhere to a “standard” writing process (although this is probably more common than he thought, at least now it is).
I identify with his “dizzying struggle with the Now-ness of experience” (22). This section on page 20 is also fascinating: he says that he is “not writing for others, mostly” and that his “guide is the self, and its adventuring in the language brings about communication.” Writing has always been really fun for me, and I hope I will always feel this “elation, and discovery” Stafford talks about (20). I don’t personally like that he doesn’t write for “the learning of methods” or “the broadening of culture” (22) though. One of my instincts is that writing is very social, which is why stuff like linguistic discrimination is important to me. However, I also still write just for me.
I write what I want, and I write it how I want. I always listen to outside opinions and seek them out, because I value that part of the process too. I will always consider the effect of what I write, because I am concerned with societal development and social justice stuff. But in the end, I take everything that I learn from society and history and whatever else, and I form my writing around it like a protective shield thing, with everything that excites me and fills me with passion hammered into the metal. I don’t even know where that metaphor came from, I’m so tired right now. But I like it!
I use language how I want, and structure and genre and everything else. A lot of this is probably influenced by my experience writing genre fiction and making silly shit up all the time. I love mixing genres (Mystery/science fiction! Horror/romance!) and I love blending genre and literary fiction and ignoring all the rules (while still kind of following them). I mostly just do whatever I want always. That’s why I really liked Stafford’s piece after I let myself get into it. He sounds a little bit pompous sometimes, but aren’t all writers kind of assholes? No matter how kind/open/selfless we are, we still write because we want the world to hear our thoughts that we think are cool. We talked about this last week, when we discussed why we write. I’m not saying writing for yourself is a bad thing at all, or that it actually makes you an asshole. I’m just saying I write because I want to, and sometimes I’m selfish about it, and that’s okay too.
Thanks for reading! See y’all in class tomorrow. :)
I reject this especially when it leads to scaring/scarring young learners. In 2016 I presented at NCPTW (National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing) with a panel of three other Boise State Writing Center consultants and our former director. We are friends and coworkers, and we are all passionate about English, writing, Writing Center studies, and social justice. The theme of this conference and our panel was diversity and inclusivity as it relates to Writing Centers. I focused on the concept of linguistic discrimination and the ramifications of this dangerous mindset. If y’all are curious, here’s a link to the handout I made for the presentation.
I love this idea from The Importance of Writing Badly: that we need to stop “alienating young writers from the language we expect them to master.” Additionally, Dr. Ballenger’s article was published in 1990 - I find it very sad that this problem is still as insidiously buried in our education system as it was in the past. We really haven’t improved much.
I love writing and the power of the English language (and all languages). We should be allowed to play around with English, have fun with it, and learn from our mistakes. We should be allowed to write about whatever’s in “this moment” and write about whatever’s running through us, like Natalie Goldberg discusses in her piece. English as a language has consistently evolved throughout time, and continues to evolve as society changes, so why should grammar police have the right to say what is wrong? There are certain grammar conventions that should be followed, especially in academic settings, but we shouldn’t utilize fear tactics to help people learn them. Although I had my traumatic experiences in school, I never had a teacher in writing or English scare me like that. I consider myself lucky. All I feel I can do now is perpetuate the idea that writing should not be terrifying. My work at the Writing Center in recent years has energized this belief.
Here I’d like to move from this idea of social writing into this idea of personal writing, which are totally connected but also different. (That's why I called this post "Two Sides of the Same Coin.") I love what William Stafford explores in his piece. It’s interesting to me when he says that he wants “to take a definite position, and [his] main plea is for the value of an unafraid, face-down, flailing, and speedy process in using the language” (22-23). I actually didn’t like his piece at first, because the beginning was floaty and vague, but then I realized that was kind of the point. He's describing his own personal writing process, and how it doesn’t have to make sense or adhere to a “standard” writing process (although this is probably more common than he thought, at least now it is).
I identify with his “dizzying struggle with the Now-ness of experience” (22). This section on page 20 is also fascinating: he says that he is “not writing for others, mostly” and that his “guide is the self, and its adventuring in the language brings about communication.” Writing has always been really fun for me, and I hope I will always feel this “elation, and discovery” Stafford talks about (20). I don’t personally like that he doesn’t write for “the learning of methods” or “the broadening of culture” (22) though. One of my instincts is that writing is very social, which is why stuff like linguistic discrimination is important to me. However, I also still write just for me.
I write what I want, and I write it how I want. I always listen to outside opinions and seek them out, because I value that part of the process too. I will always consider the effect of what I write, because I am concerned with societal development and social justice stuff. But in the end, I take everything that I learn from society and history and whatever else, and I form my writing around it like a protective shield thing, with everything that excites me and fills me with passion hammered into the metal. I don’t even know where that metaphor came from, I’m so tired right now. But I like it!
I use language how I want, and structure and genre and everything else. A lot of this is probably influenced by my experience writing genre fiction and making silly shit up all the time. I love mixing genres (Mystery/science fiction! Horror/romance!) and I love blending genre and literary fiction and ignoring all the rules (while still kind of following them). I mostly just do whatever I want always. That’s why I really liked Stafford’s piece after I let myself get into it. He sounds a little bit pompous sometimes, but aren’t all writers kind of assholes? No matter how kind/open/selfless we are, we still write because we want the world to hear our thoughts that we think are cool. We talked about this last week, when we discussed why we write. I’m not saying writing for yourself is a bad thing at all, or that it actually makes you an asshole. I’m just saying I write because I want to, and sometimes I’m selfish about it, and that’s okay too.
Thanks for reading! See y’all in class tomorrow. :)
I hope we talk about your NCPTW presentation in class. "Linguistic discrimination" is both important and complicated. One way I'd like to complicate our celebration of the freedom to write freely is the idea that certain discourses confer power and authority, and as much as we might want to resist this, it's a reality of language use. That's one of the reasons some argue for that we disempower students when we don't discourage them from "indulging" in personal writing and narrative. If the language of power in academia is formal, author-evacuated, argumentative discourse, why waste time encouraging students to freewrite about their first kiss? Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteYou spell good, or whatever. Haha, but in all seriousness, while I wrote about the complete opposite viewpoint on the importance of ‘good’ writing in my own post, I absolutely get what you mean about the unfair academic hierarchy discriminating against students who simply have a system of expressing ideas that doesn’t match up perfectly with our own ‘values’ characterizing western higher education. I am reminded of the philosophy behind punk rock, when some of the most influential musicians in the world were inspired by the idea that they didn’t have to be absolute masters of their instruments in order to become badass rockstars and change the world with their art. Of course, no one who has ever tried anything ever was a master at it when they first started, but when a movement breaks the mold of what The Man has decided is and isn’t good music, the makers of that movement can deliver their own version of perfect. 🤘
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